Hello everyone!

This update is a bit out of schedule. Some survey results pointed to you guys wanting a more alternating release cycle, so here is a small patch for you to enjoy!

I also wanted to gather some feedback and performance analysis for the new graphical features instead of releasing a big patch with everything broken. Saves me headaches later, makes you happy earlier. Win-win situation right here.

However, let’s not make the intro longer than the patch notes, so let’s get to it!

New Volumetrics

The last patch introduced a bunch of details to our beloved snowy tundra, and this update aims to take visual fidelity further across all available maps.

Here is a before and after for each map:

Capital Outskirts

before

after

Tundra of the North

before

after

Underground Dungeons

before

after

By default, right after the update, the quality of volumetric effects will be set fairly low to avoid issues on lower-end devices.

Regardless, I encourage you to try setting these options higher and report back with the results.

For snow map you also need a Far render distance to render clouds in the sky.

My 3080 runs a fairly stable 100+ fps with quality settings maxed out, but I’d like to get some feedback from a wider variety of hardware to make sure it performs well enough!

Performance Optimizations

The Capital Outskirts map can be quite resource-intensive with settings cranked up, but this version should improve performance for trees and 3D+ grass rendering. As a result, foliage may look a bit less bushy, but the optimizations allow for higher instanced grass density at the same performance cost.

Just don’t go overboard with grass density if you want to keep over 60 fps!

The Tundra of the North map should also run slightly better on high snow settings.

Underground Dungeons Rework

As you may have noticed from the comparison screenshots, the dungeon (aside from ambient lighting) looks quite different.

That’s because the map has been completely remade!

It’s not fully complete yet. It has all the features the previous one had, but is still missing some decorations. These will come in a future update.

The layout is similar to the old one but much more diverse.

Here are a few screenshots for your viewing pleasure:

Not so much “Underground Dungeons” anymore, so it might need a rebranding.

Top-Down View

The top-down camera was also adjusted to “work” with this map, though some rooms still won’t cooperate due to current technical limitations.

Relic Loadouts

A while back I saw a request to unify relic pages in one of the survey reports.

That did go against the design choice I made when initially implementing relics, but I found a way to implement it that should satisfy everyone.

Loadouts replaced the previous Recommendations tab and can be accessed from the toolbar.

You can create as many loadouts as you want, name them, set relic priorities, limits, and so on, then apply everything with a single click.

You can even make the system reuse relics from other characters (though it will unequip relics from those characters).

All the advanced settings are accessible by clicking the hamburger button on the top right.

You can create a loadout from the currently active relic page by selecting the New From Equipped option.

You can even export your current loadout into a file to share with others!

Loadout Editing

When editing or adding a new relic to the loadout, you can set a limit for the maximum value of a stat.

How does it work?

The inner workings are pretty simple. First, prepare a list of relics you want automatically equipped.

Relics at the top will take priority over those below. In the example above, the Crit Rate relic is at the very top of the list with a limit set to 35%.

The system will equip relics into every Offense and Mixed slot until the combined bonuses reach 35%. Once the 35% crit rate is reached, the remaining Offense and Mixed slots will be filled with the Crit Damage relic defined below.

Then all the Defensive and remaining Mixed slots will be filled with the Health Regen relics, and so on.

You can change the order of relics by simply dragging them around.

Character Tuner Details

Following the previous update, Character Tuner is now getting the missing feature of viewing weapon details.

Hover over an item currently used in your build to expand it. You can view the full description and basic weapon stats such as damage dealt.

You can also adjust weapon level to see how different upgrades affect stats with each level unlocked, as well as view what each upgrade does at every level.

I couldn’t implement the details into the main item list due to technical limitations, but I hope this is enough (┬┬﹏┬┬)

Changes not mentioned in 1.9

I did comment on these under the last post, but I’ll also mention them here.

Enemy knockback

Enemies now take knockback from various attacks. It’s been on my backlog for a long time and I wish I had implemented it sooner. Anyway, it made it into 1.9 without testing (with another hotfix patch), so... yeah.

Pierce projectiles

Another change that slipped into 1.9 is how piercing projectiles behave. I felt they fell short compared to AoE types. With the introduction of knockback, they became much more powerful, but still not quite where I’d like them.

Previously, pierce projectiles internally kept a count of how many enemies they touched. If the counter exceeded the projectile’s pierce count stat, the projectile would despawn.

This had a few flaws.

Firstly, projectiles couldn’t damage multiple enemies even if it looked like they did, because once the pierce count was exceeded, the damage was nullified. Each pierce could only deal one instance of damage and that was it.

With the changes, the internal counter increments once the projectile leaves an enemy collider, allowing it to deal damage to groups of enemies. Hitting 5 enemies will still consume 5 counts of pierce, but now it will also deal 5 instances of damage, even if the pierce count for the projectile is just 2.

Another change (that started as a bug): pierce count is no longer consumed if the target dies.

So yeah, that was a bug I encountered while testing the previous change, but I figured it felt pretty good and made sense, so I kept it. Now pierce projectiles can pierce unlimited targets as long as they die in a single tick of damage.

Bug Fixes

• The character screen displayed an incorrect max count for relics

• When opening Character Tuner for the first time, the default weapon should have been added automatically. However, it wouldn’t be saved and the first slot of the build would get locked.

Launch issues after update

Following a thread that mentioned antivirus software flagging version 1.9 for whatever reason: if you have trouble running the game after the update, please let me know. I’ve had one report that seemed to resolve itself, but I’m curious if there are any other cases.

Could be a one-off case, could be a wider issue — I wouldn’t want people getting locked out like that.

Le Tease

Just so you know, I’ve already started working on the next map. I hope you fw deserts!

Afterword

That’s it for the changes.

I had two weeks off work and decided to cram in as many features as I could during that time.

Needless to say, I got no rest done, but at least the results are quite satisfactory to me (●'◡'●).

I also tallied up the overall cost of development, and man, I spent way more than I initially intended. I blame Unity for that tho. It’s a decent game engine, but the amount of missing features is baffling, and filling in the gaps gets expensive quickly. Anyway, just a rant on my part!

The next update most likely won’t be out too soon. I’ll be back to my 9-5, and the upcoming features will be time-consuming to implement (Clara, new enemies, and the new map). Regardless, I hope you’ll stick around when the time comes :D

Once again, thank you to everyone who continues to support the game (even quietly by just playing). It keeps me motivated to open the project each day!

Also, if you enjoy Requiem For a Lost World, please share it around as it helps massively, leave a positive review too. Or if you’re familiar with advertising, hit me up.

I’m extremely bad at getting this game out there o(TヘTo)